Get ready for the Q1'2019 GitLab Hackathon

First of all, I want to wish a Happy New Year to everyone in the GitLab community! I'm certainly looking forward to continued collaboration with everyone in 2019. Following successful Hackathons in 2018, I'm excited to announce that the first Hackathon this year will take place on Feb. 12-13.

What's the deal?

This is a virtual event where community members get together to work on merge requests (MRs) and also to welcome and help new contributors. We will be adding more details on the Hackathon landing page, as we get closer to the event, including prizes for everyone who has MRs merged within 10 days of the conclusion of the Hackathon.

What else is taking place?

We are again planning tutorial sessions where community experts will lead presentations plus Q&A sessions on a variety of topics. As speakers get confirmed, you will see tutorial sessions added on the Hackathon landing page. All the tutorial sessions will be recorded and added to the GitLab Hackathon playlist. If you missed tutorials from past Hackathons, I encourage you to check out videos from the playlist.

Tutorial videos on the Hackathon playlist

For the upcoming Hackathon, we will also be highlighting issues from different GitLab product categories that we want to encourage community members to work on. There will be additional prizes for community members who work on these issues and have MRs merged.

Where can I find help during the Hackathon?

For communications during the Hackathon, we will again use the GitLab Community room in Gitter. This is a channel designed to have community-related discussions and for community members to help each other as people have questions when contributing to GitLab. This is open to everyone, so please join the room if you are not part of it already.

How do I get started with contributing?

A good place to start is the Contributing to GitLab page, where you can learn how you can contribute to GitLab code, documentation, translation, and UX design.

If you have any questions, you are always welcome to reach me at rpaik@gitlab.com.